‘testy’ bieber drama
Hosp visit spawns dismissal, lawsuit
JUSTIN BIEBER’s privates are at the center of a public lawsuit.
The bizarre series of events kicked off in May, when the 23-year-old pop star checked into Northwell Health on Long Island after suffering a soccer injury that left him with a swollen testicle.
Rumors swirled among hospital staff that Bieber had checked in due to a sexually transmitted disease, a staffer’s lawyer said.
The hospital claimed an employee named Kelly Lombardo looked at Bieber’s file after hearing the unsubstantiated gossip — prompting her to be fired.
Lombardo’s lawyer, David Rosenberg, told the Daily News she sued Northwell Health for wrongful termination, insisting that she never snooped through Bieber’s medical file.
“My client was a moral employee who had respect for patient privacy and never accessed Justin Bieber’s file,” Rosenberg told The News.
“My client swears she did not access the file. From what I can tell, she’s telling the truth.”
The lawyer said Lombardo, an emergency room representative who’d been on the job since 2007, was dragged into a meeting with hospital execs who accused her of accessing Bieber’s online records.
“She was told, generally, ‘You are a young female. You’re not curious about what he was doing in the ER?’ And they fired her,” Rosenberg said.
“She didn’t admit him. Never saw him there. She was literally dragged into this.”
In her claim filed with the state Division of Human Rights, Lombardo also alleges that she was terminated because she is a woman.
A spokeswoman for Northwell Health declined to comment.
Bieber, who feared that he had suffered a potentially dangerous twisting of the spermatic cord, left the hospital after learning he only had a swollen testicle, TMZ reported.